Friday, August 06, 2010

"If I told you I was thinking of moving would you save a place for me..."

I don't know why I do it. I suppose it's a sickness. At this point its the only thing that makes me feel a glimmer of what I think I want to feel all the time.

Not heartbroken. No. Not anymore.

It's a little what love feels like with more sentimentality.

"This is worse than I expected..."

I'm not lost. Not any more. It's worse to feel nothing than something. Feeling is a state of being. I feel like I can appreciate what i see and hear and for a second it's like being in love.

(Not that I know what that feels like anyways.)

I go through the list of songs, trying to figure out what they say to me. How they make me feel. Sometimes you can go home again. Sometimes you can.

"They can't kill us all if we stay together..."

Collectively. What is collectively. I suppose the basest meaning of the word is a collection of people who form together.

If I wake up and I can tell if I've woken up, have I woken up?

"They can't kill us all but they'll try..."

It's insidious they way it drills inside you and makes you feel something. This is what it's supposed to do on some level. Is there anyone that appreciates it like I do? I wonder (but never answered...)

I want to stop thinking but then I think how?

And that occupies my thoughts. My mind is my own but it engulfs itself in worrying about what to do next.

Why doesn't the phone ring?

"...let me sleep tonight on your couch...."

I want to appreciate the beauty of things without feeling like an outcast. No one can just let a spade be a spade.

"All this was so real..."

If you empty yourself out, is nothing left, or is it just left and meaningless?And what is meaning except an explanation for the existence of something.It's an existential crisis of epic proportions that is harder to explain than it is to just simply understand.

"I love you but I'm afraid to love you..."

Why do we listen to songs that make us sad? I'm not even so sure it's sadness that overtake syou when you hear. It's almost like a surrogate for that feeling you get when another person puts a smile across your face.

(So sad really that you need someone else to put a smile there, as you are incapable of putting one there yourself most of the time.)

I've never been diagnosed as clinically depressed because I've never felt clinically depressed. What exactly does that term "clinically depressed" mean? It's almost like an excuse to medicate away the feelings we feel because of any given situation at any given moment.

"Three days was the morning..."

Why do I miss the letters that should come so much more easily underneath my fingertips?

"I am a proud man anyway..."

My hands tingle sometimes when I wake up, everytime making me more an more sure I won't be able to shake it awake this time.

Funny that comfort could cause you the loss of a hand.

"and we saw shadows of the morning light, shadows of the evening sun..."

We're always approaching things like a bear approaches a deer. The deer all delicate and graceful in the shadow of the clumsy and lumbering bear. The deer runs away briskly leaving the bear lonely once again.

I don't know how to act.*Read that twice. Both ways.

I wish I knew how to act. I acted once, twice, three times, but I forget how to now.

I'm happy when others are happy but I'm also angry because i want to be happy to and my smile says I am but my gut tells me I'm not.

Maybe I do know how to act.

Maybe it's all some grand act.

Waiting by the phone wishing.

(Oh yeah, I hate the phone. So when it rings, I won't answer. And no message will be left. And the phone number...blocked.)

I ruined the only surprise I've gotten in the last year by trying to explain too much.

It's all too much.

"Everything she says...."

It's not about the perfect line, it's about the perfect conversation. And we get so tied up with attempting to come up with the perfect opening line, that we miss the whole conversation. We all want to have a conversation, don't we?

Monday, July 05, 2010

You stand and look at the work piled on your desk and know that at the end of the day the pile would not only not likely be any smaller, but twice as big. But, the smirk on your face also tells another story, one that said in just twelve short hours none of this would be any of your responsibility anymore. Last day in homicide, and it feels good.

As yours fellow detectives walk in for what will be your last shift among the mighty members of the 3rd district (highest clearance rate in the city don't you know), you take a deep inhale and slowly exhale as you prepare to catch up on your paperwork that has been dogging you now for this whole last month since your transfer went through. Go through it did.

And it is at that moment that you realize the reason you are leaving the homicide division is not because, as you fooled yourself into thinking, because of the mountains of paperwork on your desk, but because you just can't deal with it anymore. Can't deal with the suspects, who for the most part seem to be completely cold blooded and unable to be rehabilitated. Can't deal with the victims, who as the years go on, seem to be younger and younger. Can't deal with yourself at night when you can't close a case and at least put a victim's mother and father's mind to rest about their offspring.

Offspring. That's what you called them to separate yourself from the case. Make sure you had a clear, uncompromised view of the investigation. But at the end of the day it was someone's son or daughter, and as was the job, these things just couldn't be solved sometimes. These were now the cases that made it hard for you to wake up, face the day, and come to work to do your job. A job, that by all accounts, many people think, many people say, you were born to do.

You open the first file on his desk gingerly, knowing the picture of an eighteen year old girl with a bullet hole through the center of her skull awaited you. You would still never get over what it feels like to walk upon one of these bodies, knowing you are the deciding factor between someone going punished and someone going free for this horrible crime. You read your notes slowly to try and determine which pile this folder would go on. You stare at the photo, the blond hair lying dead inside the chalk outline around her body, wondering what kind of future was cut short by whoever committed this atrocity. Could it have been a future senator or representative? Was it a future president lying dead in the picture in her college sweatshirt and faded blue jeans.

You don't know, but you do know it wasn't your responsibility after today. You close the file and throw it on a pile marked "dead-enders".

It is at this point that you are to go get your last horrible cup of homicide department coffee. But what stops you, what happens next, will completely change the course of your day and your outlook on life.

Sunday, July 04, 2010

These were the words of one Calvin "Catholic" Spires as he woke up that morning, not really conceiving of what had brought him here at this exact moment in time to this exact hotel room. Named Calvin (Cal to people whom considered him his close friends. He considered he had no friends at all really) after, well his parents never told him that, and nicknamed Catholic after his insane parents religious zealotry and Spires after god knows what the people of Ellis Island where thinking when his ancestors came over all those years ago, he was not blessed but cursed by two forgotten names and one name that connected him and his world forever with a tightly woven significance to a religion that he could not only care less about but not really ever want anything to do with at all because of its centuries of infamy and empty pageantry.

He sat on the side of the bed, legs draped over, cradling his forehead in the palms of his head. An anonymous blonde girl lay fast asleep next to him, naked and unarmed, her leather skirt and tube top scattered in a pile of passion on the floor. He looked at her make-up spread around her face like some twisted demented clown and thought,

Whether that was an actual thought and maybe had slipped out between his lips into the empty stale air conditioned room remained to be seen as it was early and he was still wiping the sleep sand from the corners of his eyes.

He hadn't even had any coffee yet.

Cal was an asshole. With or without his coffee. Of this there was no doubt. Whether his fans, that he was hours from meeting, would believe or not, some people are just simply distempered. All day and all night. This distemper can be mistaken for genius at the write time and place, as it had been for years with Cal. Cal was one of these people. Brought up in a world of neglect and sarcasm, it's a matter his smart mouth didn't get him killed along the way (and it very nearly did on many an occasion.) The only thing that seemingly saved him was smarter (Pulitzer Prize winning in fact) mind and an extreme aversion to stay as far away from people in general as possible as he had grown later in life. The publication of his first novel made both of these things possible in spades.

A knock invited itself to Cal's door.

"Mr. Spires sir? Umm...ahh...sir...umm...ahh...we have to leave in approximately ninety minutes to get to the signing in time."

Cal bellowed at the door.

"GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE...WE'LL LEAVE WHEN I'M FUCKING GOOD AND READY."

Saturday, July 03, 2010

I walk up the aisle, my hands are sweating, I don't know why...I'm not the sort to get nervous. My heart is racing and as I turn the corner, there he is. My hero. I'm in awe. He is surrounded by an entourage of people, a tall blonde women dressed in a business suit, a couple of tall bulky men with ear pieces. A red head in a short leather skirt stands of to his left next to the magazines. I don't believe she's with him. She looks like a hooker and she's simply thumbing through those rags they call entertainment news. Some kids run around recklessly in the children's section (obviously roped off from the rest of the store...They're mother really should be keeping better watch of them) not having any idea of the icon that sits just feet away from them.

"C'mon kid. Lots of people waiting." The tall bulky man with the earpiece startles me.

I walk up slowly, savoring every moment. Our eyes meet and I instantly know he understands. He understands and wants to help me in my quest to follow in his footsteps.

I walk up to the table thinking of so many things I want to say. The stabbing pain from my head is quelled by my shear excitement of this moment I have been waiting for so long to consummate. So many questions run to the top of my head.

What to ask first? What to ask first?

"Hello son."

I am frozen.

"Son."

He grabs out for my book (in my left hand, my manuscript is under my right arm).

"So what should I write here?"

"Uh...uh...uh...hi."

"Well son, we don't have all day. What would you like me to write?"

"Uh...uh...uh..So nice to meet you..uh me...uh well..uh...You see sir...What I wanted to say..."

"How about something short and sweet. Keep reaching for the stars, kid."

"Uh...Yeah...That's great...Thanks."

"Son, you have a great day now you hear?"

He smiles at me as he says this. He knows. He knows.

"Thanks sir. I appreciate uh...uh...You works."

"Thanks for coming out son. That's enough now move along."

I grab for his hand but the security guard stops me.

"Time to go kid. You had more than enough time. Go."

I stand shocked and in awe.

"Get out of here kid before we have one of these guys move you."

Snotty bookstore employee. What does he know.

I turn so as to not show him the tears coming out of my eyes. Tears not of happiness but of sheer embarrassment. Stupid stupid me. What was I thinking. I walk with a brisk pace, tears rolling off my cheeks, head faced down so no one can see. But they do see the tears falling on the ground. I know they do. What was I thinking. Stuttering like a fool.

"I appreciate your works?"

I'm a fake, I'm a phony. At this moment I am everything I dread and hate. I am all those people outside. And all those people are laughing at me. And the pain takes over my head. And I know the only thing, as I make my way home, that will make it better. Not the cold, crisp air that is now relieving itself of the sunny morning, or the animal cracker clouds I make from between my lips or walking away from all these fakes, these phonies.

No there's only one thing that will make the pain go away, as I walk down an back alley that leads to the back door of my apartment building. There's only one thing.

Friday, July 02, 2010

I stand here in the cool crisp morning air contemplating the words in mere minutes that will flow out of my mouth. As I exhale, the fog being created from between my lips forms into the silhouette of the animal crackers I used to eat as a child.

Head first. Always head first.

A smile begins to form across the fog bearing lips as I remember those good times I had as a child, playing with my imaginary friends, creating worlds in my head that could never be invaded by war or disease or famine. This is how I know I will be good at what I want to do.

You see, they've always said I have a good imagination. Impeccable in fact.

And that's why I now he'll love this thing in my hand right, help me get it published in fact.

Because it's not for nothing that I've been standing here in line since five this morning. That in conjunction with the confluence of people behind me that wouldn't know great literature if it opened itself up and stated reading itself to them, tells me that he'll see through the facade of all their "fakeness" and dismiss them as not worthy.

But me, he'll see it. That thing I have.

The sun is peeping out behind the tall buildings that surround the bookstore we are standing at. The velvet rope with a sign that reads, "Line starts here" keeps us in a vaguely organized mess outside the store. The sun enhances the outlines of the animal crackers that continue to make themselves known as they escape my mouth.

Most people wouldn't notice things like this. Most people aren't as aware.

It's 9:45. Fifteen minutes to go.

Suddenly a feel a restless push from behind me. The idiots at the source of the push are talking of things that don't interests me. Furthermore their obnoxious and boisterous behavior proves that they shouldn't be here in this line waiting, but somewhere else.

They're not worthy like I am. Fifteen years it's been. Fifteen years since his last public appearance, more than that if your talking about the last time he's actually come out to talk to fans.

The people behind me are proving exactly why. The din that comes from their mouths cause the never leaving headache that comes and goes in my head to reappear like an unwanted apparition. Sometimes I close my eyes and the pain subsides.

For a little while.

I turn back and look at the overanxious crowd and give the that glare. Lucinda, my neighbor says I give it ever so often. She says it's a look that would empty a room and it gives her chills when I do it and she really wishes I wouldn't.

So I give them a glare. One of them snidely grins back at me, sticking his tongue out.

Ridiculous.

I close my eyes as a sharp pain over takes my head. All I can seemingly hear at moments like this is pain. I can hear what pain sounds like. It's incredibly frightening but enlightening at the same time. Think of what the sound of a knife being stabbed into someone's chest should sound like. That's what I hear. I don't think many people have a concept of what this should sound like.

The pain subsides. I hear a conversation behind me. A grating accent that reeks of little to no education.

"I hear he's simply lived, holed up in his house up there for years. Him and a therapist. I hear he has everything delivered to him, he never leaves the house. Food, clothes, electronics. And he doesn't shower. He has this like powder stuff, kind of like delousing powder. And he has this chamber he sleeps in. Kind of like Michael Jackson but way more complex. And it also acts as an isolation chamber and that's where he gets his ideas from... "

Idiot. She obviously reads not enough literature and too much People magazine and National Enquirer.

I am about to correct her, and wait....Here it comes.

Finally, a bookstore employee has come outside.

"All right people, single file. No Pushing. He's only going to sign two things at most for you. You each have five minutes and don't get too close. There's a lot of people here today people and he only has a limited amount of time here, so please let's keep things moving along. "

All makes perfect sense. Oh so many things to say, so many things to discuss. But only five minutes. What to say. Well, I know he'll love me so I'll just introduce myself and instantly we'll have that connection and of course he'll recognize how I'm worthy of so much more of his time and of course he'll ask me to dinner and we can discuss....

Sunday, June 27, 2010

She said it was the best thing that ever happened to her and she wished it had never ended. This is what she told herself as she cried at night thinking what she had done wrong to makes things go so wrong. A dab of her eyeliner streams down her face now, at this time, thinking and reaching the inevitable oblivion of what she had imagined would be the chaos of her unrequited heart.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

She rose from he bed (it mas the depth of night that made her the most calm at times like these), and left the huddled mass laying there lifeless beside her. The body was without life, but was not dead. She couldn't bring herself to look at it. To look at what she had done. It made her wonder ever so slightly if other people had experiences like the one she was currently having. She wondered if they had had them in the past, if they would have them in the future. She wondered if the same experiencing was concurrent with this exact feeling of pain and alienation that she was having right now.

(The body, only lifeless because she would have it so, and not lifeless in any really sense of a homicide being committed. The only homicide seemed to lie in her soul. She was tired of settling and only wondered at some point in the future, if the need to feel her emptiness with more sorrow would ever stop her from overcoming the feeling that she would eternally be alone like she was at this moment.)

She felt masculine. She acted masculine. But she was very feminine. Which allowed her to snarl them all in her traps.

She had forgotten what it was like to be nice. (Besides, nice was simply a misnomer that was added to the wealth of characterstics that resided in the perfect model of human citizenry and compassion. A model which was, let's face it, pure unadulterated fantasy.)

She had gotten to a point where she was tired of being nice, so she stopped being nice. And then she forgot how to be nice.

And really, wasn't being nice just another misnomer for being a liar at her core.

Things stopped being nice, but things didn't start getting real. This only happens in television dramas and reality programming.

So what was it she was looking for. Was she still searching? Could she ever find it?

What was that saying? From that movie?

"The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world it didn't exist."

She had tried to play that same trick, but the audience was starting to jeer the stage.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

About a year ago I bought a camera, in some last chance desperate (and probably pathetic) attempt to find something that would connect me with the person I was last in a relationship with. With no idea of how to take a proper picture, no understanding of how it works, little more than layman's understanding of pointing and shooting, I dived in because I desperately needed to believe there was something that would magically re-spark my relationship and make everything turn out okay. I bought everything to the specification I heard her speak about because I figured I could find some sort of commonality that would allow things to at the very least to change in the way they had been and at the very most make things okay between us.

I haven't used that camera I bought yet.

And us. Well...we don't speak. (This is solely by her discretion. Let me make that perfectly clear. After working and working to keep some semblance of friendship, my only option available was eventually to just give up. I hate giving up.)

People can change or they don't. Despite the mask you want to put on things to say you've bettered yourself for the camera of the world, many times its either difficult to change the core of what we are. We can pretend to want to be different, but change requires so much more than that. I learned recently that just because you've changed the color of your make-up, it often doesn't mean that whats underneath has changed at all. Selfish, self centered, manipulative people just change the rules of the game their playing, but the game is always the same. I'm typically not one to pity people for their decisions, but I was physically reviled by how pathetic some people are, and try to use their own concept of "love" to justify their actions. At a certain point, you can only write off these actions and let them self-destruct, (or not self-destruct) of their own volition.

There's no such thing as unconditional love.

People are like snowflakes. No two people are ever the same. No two people are capable of the same experiences and reactions to what life deals us. BUt I feel like we should be capable of recognizing these differences. But often, it seems we are just too caught up in our own oeuvre to recognize the oeuvre of those around us.

I feel like the only thing left is true open-mindedness.

By this, I guess I want to realize that with no expectations, I can only ever be surprised by everything.

All I can do then, is feed my creativity in any way I can. With no expectations for what this creativity can bring me, all I can be is rewarded by it.

I don't want to be a misanthropic person, but it seems more consistent that people are more disappointing. This is not to say I'm a machine and I like anyone else don't want to foster relationships with people, or don't crave some sort of understanding from another person, but I feel as I grow older that there are less and less people capable of understanding me. I feel that I'm often too scared too try to understand those around me.

(Don't take this to mean that I believe I am this overly complex person. I don't feel like I'm anymore complex than anyone else. But then again, we're all complex.)

I'm just tired of being misunderstood. I want to be understood.

I like walking around the Charles River, thinking. I like going into stores and not feeling complicit to buy anything but feeling overwhelmed and happy in the things I am looking at. I like really simple things. Books that make me think. Movies that make me smile. A sunset. The beach.

I feel like, just recently, it's possible to appreciate everything we see with being materialistic.

I like the things I see. I don't feel any need to own them.

Just like I don't feel the need to be with someone. I like the feeling a smile gives me when I smile back. It needs to go no further than that. (Although, at times I'm often frustrated by my inability to spark any action beyond appreciation.)

I've grown a new appreciation for architecture recently. It's because it's art and structure made perfect.

Who doesn't crave some sort of structure while giving into their wilder impulses?

Sunday, April 25, 2010

"I don't know. I guess it was just one of those attempts to try to feel like I knew what to say. I hate small talk. But it seems that's the only way to get involved in a....you know...conversation."

"Yeah. I hate that. Never feeling like I know what to say."

"Conversations are so hard to have. All the things I think about saying always say so crazy be fore they come out of my mouth. So instead I just resort to things like 'what are you up to'? When in reality there are so many other things I could have asked you. When in reality, the one question I do ask has a potential, at best, length of about 2 minutes in conversation time at which time I will have no idea what to say next. I already feel like I'm talking to much."

"Naw. You're not. I think most people feel that way. Maybe it's a result of the way technology has invaded out lives. It seems the instant messagings and textings and facebookings of the word has made us so much more conversational. I'm not even sure people like talking to each other anymore. It's like it's too hard or something."

"Yeah. I mean, I don't even like talking on the phone. Mostly because the whole time I'm worrying about the connection being lost or my minutes running out or just my phone dying leading in a sort of wordless rejection that I may not mean to give and you could potentially very much take as a dismissal of anything interesting that you may have been saying."

"I'm not even sure people get my texts. So when a text goes unanswered, it's like, is that intentional or did they just not get my text. It's agonizing and eventually, to save face, you just have to give up."

"Yeah. Let me ask you something."

"Okay, what."

"What do you want?"

"what do you mean?"

"I mean...do you ever think about what you really want. Do you ever wonder what you could be doing instead of what you are doing. DO you ever wonder what you want other people to do...things that could affect what you do?"

"I'm not sure I ever have time to think about things that deeply. I mean people are going to do what they do. It either may affect me or it may not. I'm not sure I can think about how much control that would have over my own actions. I mean, if I thought about that too much, it would probably be too much. Too intense."

"I can see that. I guess what I really mean in all that is I often try to figure out what I want...what I want to do because my previous actions have lead me to what I don't want. I probably do think about it to much."

"Yeah. You should probably relax a little. I don't mean that in a condescending wya mind you. I just mean that you create a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy by thinking the way you do all the time."

"Do you think..."

"Again with the thinking..."

"Not do I think...Do you think the way things happen are an intricately laid out plan the world has for us or that we are left to our own evices to make things happen for ourselves."

"I think it's important to take hold of what you want if that's what you mean."

"Yeah...you see I'm not sure I agree with that."

"How so?"

"Well, every time I try to do that, it just doesn't seem right. And it sure as hell never seems to work out right."

"There's a lot to showing confidence you know?"

"How am I supposed to show confidence if I don't feel confident?"

"Oh. Well in that case, I'm not so sure then. I mean you can't feel not confident all the time, can you?"

"No. I don't feel not confident all the time. Just the times when I really want something badly."

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

It's like that feeling you get when your hungry but you don't know what you want to eat. Not the pregnant kind of hungry, with ice cream and pickles, but more like one thing could make your day complete if you just knew what it was that you wanted to feel yourself digesting. You pick something up, put something down, nothing seems like it will satiate that hunger you have until you see the thing that will. Then something sparks as your eyes makes the one last pass, and you find the thing you have been looking for all along, not realizing that it was always much closer than you realized.

Or maybe it's not really anything like that at all.

We are surrounded by rules. Rules society sets. Rules we set for ourselves. Rules that are simply for social situations so that we can't really tell what each other is thinking.

Everything is set forth for us for a reason.

But what if we lived life without rules. Or maybe more specifically, what if we lived life without restraints.

I wish I could live my life without constantly worrying about what is thought of me. Only by certain people. I often find myself thinking the people whose opinions I care most about me are the people who quite frankly don't think about me at all.

Which in itself is a sort of rejection. (Not to say that people who do think something of me, aren't important or their thoughts don't mean anything. In these cases most of the time I actually know what they think of me and have created a buffer myself to be able to handle whatever they think of me be it good or bad.)

There are so many things in life that I think we wish were easier.

I wish it was easier to meet people. I wish it was easier to get to know people.

We carry all these pre-conceived notions about the people we see on a daily basis that in essence create this wall or reasoning about why we can't "know" them any better than how we will in that specific moment when we first form our opinions about them.

I see people on a daily basis that interest me. That I find intriguing but it won't ever go any further than that.

Don't ask, don't tell.

I sit there with this low confidence, want to be accepted and need to not be perceived as a creep leching upon a person I find interesting. (I think the notion of where we are as a society shows that any stranger attempting to talk to another stranger is immediately taken as an attempt by the one who makes "the move (not being sexually in this case, but simply being interested) and as such all those dreams of meeting someone in passing are shattered because of the pre-conceived notions we hold for each other and what the news shows us on a nightly basis.)

Every person that walks up to me is a potential pervert, creep, or general malcontent.

I don't typically lust after every girl I see that I find intriguing. It doesn't go that far for me in an initial meeting.

Introverted extroverts are the hardest type of people to be. I can't stand the feeling of wanting to crawl out of my skin when I'm around people I don't know.

Strike that: People I'm not comfortable around (I know lots of people who still give me the feeling I've described above.)

As I get older, it gets infinitely and increasingly more difficult to change.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

I'm cynical of people who say their significant other is their best friend. I'm cynical because I'm not sure this is possible. There's a raw to truth that I share with my best friends that I've never been able to really share with anyone I've dated. But maybe that's the key...maybe that's what finding someone is about.

I've never wanted to be friends more after a relationship that with the last girl I dated. I've had lots of other relationships in my life, most of which have ended messily, and almost all of which I've had no inclination at all to be friends with the people it didn't work out with. But this last one, I really wanted to be friends. Maybe it was some deep seeded sense of masochism to retain a relationship with someone who rejected me or maybe it was deep seated fantasy that made me believe that if we retained our friendship, there was a chance of something else happening again later. More likely though, it was the fact that I really liked her, really believed on a basic level that she was a good person, and really for the first time in my life figured that some sort of relationship with this person was better than nothing at all.

This person will not talk to me anymore in any circumstance, so I'm forced to move on.

But what I learned beyond the initial lust and passion of this last relationship is nothing is built on these things. And once these things had faded, it was too late to build that friendship that you probably desperately need to retain any sort of romantic involvement with anyone. And your left hurt, rejected, and knowing that on some level you feel your not even worth retaining a friendship with.

(Those feelings being temporary and in time realizing it's really not you, it was her all along.)

SO what do you take in the future. It's so difficult because we're always on guard, we're always looking for people's ulterior motives. When all we really want in building any relationship is to start with this ideal of friendship and see if it can move beyond that. I want a best friend. I don't now if I need someone who is just another best friend. But more than that, I want a new friend. All we all want is a friend probably, when it comes down to it. Or maybe, just maybe we want the above.

When someone tells you they weren't the one, even though you wanted to believe it, maybe that's the part you have to pay attention to. That you believed or wanted to believe, rather than just know.

I don't know what dating is or is supposed to consist of. I do know how to be a good a loyal friend. I know how to talk and sit and listen and watch movies and laugh. I don't know how that's any different than what I experience already with my best friends now.

I just know it's not the same. But I also have more faith than ever that I can wait until I do know.

Thursday, March 04, 2010

I'm tired of trying to be something I'm not even though I'm not sure what that is. I'm tired of being expected to fulfill goals that I don't even hold for myself. I'm tired of trying to be the person other(s) want me to be. I'm tired of thinking that who I am is who you see me as. I'm tired of being friendly. I'm tired of being a friend. I'm tired of opening my mouth without any words coming out. I'm tired of portraying that I'm not confident when I know I am. I'm tired of knowing I'm good enough and not just thinking I'm not.

I'm tired of knowing what's good for me. I'm tired of living what's bad for me. I'm tired of pretending to not like seemingly diametrically opposed things when it's okay to like them both. I'm tired of seeing those around me act like it doesn't matter when it does. I'm tired of things not being good enough.

Who do we want to be?

Who do I want to be?

I'm tired of trying to act like myself but not feeling like myself. I'm tired of being frozen. I'm tired of the feeling my heart makes at certain times of the day when it feels like it could pound through my chest for something in the end that's really just silly. I'm tired of thinking "it" is silly. I'm tired of acting a part. I'm tired of playing games. I'm tired of everything involved with "it". I'm tired of not really understanding what "it" is.

What do we want?

What is it that we all want?

I want to be. Not be in a zen sense, because that's one of those things that people pretend to understand with little knowledge of what it all actually means.

I'm not educated enough on some subjects to pretend to know what I'm talking about.

I want to exist. I want to co-exist. I want to enjoy. I want to smile. I want to be smiled at. I want to look and not feel ashamed or embarrassed. I want eyes to lock without the immediate reaction being to look away. I want to be comfortable without settling for anything. I want to know what that level of comfort is. I want to sit and talk, one on one, about nothing. I want to stop acting and start being.

I don't know that I want you but I know I want you.

It's not simple. It's complicated. It's always complicated. I'm not even sure you can understand what I am trying to get across...trying to say. I want to say the things I said and I don't want to be cute or charming.

But I do.

I want to talk specifically and generally all at the same time.

"I know all this and more."

And that I don't know anything.

I just want to start from scratch.

Do you know how to do that?

I want to wake up not alone.

You might not be hearing me correctly. You might not be comprehending me correctly.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

This morning I made a major life decision. Maybe not so major to you, but very much so to me. I decided instead of following my plan for the last three years and getting my Masters in English Lit, I'm going to get my Masters in FIne Arts in Creative Writing. This is huge, because it's about not settling for the middling road I want my life to be and following the dreams of what my future could be.

We've all seen that movie about the sturggling writer who teaches on the side. While I want to teach eventually, this is of no doubt, there's nothing stopping me from going after my dreams of what I really want to do, which is not write about writing, but actually write. All my heroes did it so why can't I.

The only difference in my head between a Masters in English Lit and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is talent and about a years worth of furious writing to build up a portfolio. While a year ago I would have seen this as some sort of procrastination, today I see it as following a dream. So I have about a year. A year in which I intend to write a story a week and work on the novel that I've restarted three times in the last 2 months. A year to prove to myself that the words in my head can be put together confidently and to tell a story for entertainment and for my own cerebral gratification.

And I look at this not as procrastiation but following what I want to do, grabbing the dream and going with it. There's nothing holding me back, right. I'm in the perfect place to do this, right here, right now.

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

...nothing I ever wanted to feel. Not that I don't want to feel anything because we all want, or have the basic human need to feel something, anything at all.

Sometimes it seems like it's just easier not to feel. To withdraw yourself and be able to not feel like the rest of humanity.

I suppose at some level this is what being misanthropic is really like.

I want to go back and learn more but I'm not sure what that really accomplishes at the end of the day. I want to teach but I sometimes am nervous that there's nothing left to teach in this world we live in.

Another misanthropic thought.

I can't really define what perfect is because I've never met it. (Well this not being entirely true. I sometimes, on a daily basis, think I rub up against perfect on a regular basis, but I'm often too afraid to look it in the eye and tell it what i think. What I really think.)

Nobody ever claimed that life would be easy. We lose things before we ever had a chance to actually have them. I've never had any pre-conceived notions about what other people should have or be, because I can't begin to understand what I should be...sometimes though you just want to smile. Sometimes you just want to laugh.

I think we all long for that feeling deep inside of being warm and centered.

All the psychologists would likely say (well maybe not all the psychologists...maybe just some of them) that you have to find this happiness and warmth within yourself before you can look for it from another person.

Bullshit.

"I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel."

Because he really is. That's all that comes to mind in these long remembrances of thoughts and memories for how we are supposed to act, how we are supposed to be.

White picket fences, 2.5 children and a dog.

When really all we want is to smile and laugh and feel good making someone else feel good.

The fact that 3 years later while at an all boys Catholic School, Keith came out of the closet, not only made the Cosmo thing a lot more clear but also on some level made his comments to me strangely ironic (ironic in the way Gay people, especially at this time, were portrayed and commented on in the media, and not ironic in a way that gives any credence to this Cosmo poll in any fashion in how people are "socially acceptable").

There was some ooh and ahhing after I replied with this retort and I still fashion it as the finest comeback I will ever have in my life.

But it's stuck with me. My own mother, bless her heart, would sometimes put thoughts in my head (a direct result of the hatred and bigotry she experienced in her relationship with my father, I'm sure) where when a girl would break up with me it could possibly be related to my racial heritage.

It's a joke I've sometimes brushed off, and while it's been far from the strongest of my insecurities about who I am, where I come from, and my battles with relationships with girls over the years, it's still always sort of stuck there. Like a piece of stick in a shoe that's not hurting you, but may cause a blister if its there for too much longer.

Lots of people assumed when Obama was elected that "I must be REALLY happy about that."

Which I was, it's true. I never thought I would see anything like that in my lifetime. But what became clear to me while watching all the hub bub about racial issues in the country and things of that like is that, while he is the first and only bi-racial president our country has had, it's still not the same. The arguments that were had over his hertiage where overshadowed by me by the fact that to me, in appearance, while his family was comprised similarly of mine (white mother raised, black father who left at an early age) appearance ais everything. And while I wanted to identify with Obama, I couldn't because at the end of the day, I saw him as he appeared, as a black man.

While I've tended to identify myself as Black my entire life, I haven't always been 100% certain that that's what my "classification" should be or that I have ever fully identified myself in this way.

In the classic film Soul Man, towards the end of the movie, James Earl Jone's character says to C. Thomas Howell something to the effetc that "Now you know what it's like to be black." C. Thomas Howell replies with something like, "No I don't. I could always change back." For all the controversy caused when this movie came out, it's m,essage can be distilled down to this simple though, and one I wish people would really understand and realize when trying to "know how it feels".

A couple of years ago, Vertigo released an Original Graphic Novel called "Incognegro" by Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece. In it, a man is of a bi-racial background and as such "passes" for white to help to infiltrate and dismantle the KKK and white supremacy movements that arose in the south by his job as a journalist. It's probably the first and only thing in my years on this earth that has spoken to, about and with me as deeply as it did. Meeting Mat Johnson at the NYCC a few months later was one of the treasures of my life, because unlike Obama, Mr. Johnson wrote and talked about things that I had expereinced and thought my whole life.

My suburban upbringing did not leave much for others to be able to identify about how I felt. And even visting my Dad, there was still a half of me he wouldn't and couldn't understand (depsite his mariages to Caucasian women) just like there was a side to me my mother could never really understand or idnetify with me, depsite the hatred and bigotry she expereinced growing up in the 70's and 80's in a bi-racial relationship and having a bi-racial child.

I've read articles of people like myself, who can't understand the "political correctness" of calling yourself half-something. But realy, that's because they can easily pass, or identify, through their physical characteristics, with people who are one race or another. I've always felt split down the middle. My hair, not tight and curly enough to be "black" but straight enough, especially short, to pass as any number of races. (As my high school prom dates grandmother would itinmate when describing me as a nice Italian Boy ..most lkely due to my short straight hair and my olive comlexion).

My skin, not dark enough to be black, just tan enough to be confused for Hispanic (no matter how many people who walk up to me thinking I speak Spanish fluently only to be shocked....really shocke...when I say I'm not even hispanic_) and certainly not close to white enough to be confused for Caucasian.) Tell me someone who has been mistaken for Greek, Italian, Spanish, Middle Eastern, Hispanic, and Smaoan, but has not history of any of those in his lineage wouldn't go through life thinking, "People don't understand."

We are who we are, and our features shouldn't define us, but in a way they do. Because impression is definiton to a certain extent. I don't know my fathers side of the family really, I do know my mothers, and for years I had no idea what I was really (beyond myself).

So back the those seeds of doubt and insecurity planted in my head all those years ago. You know, the scratching? I know many of my exes, I know what I am had nothing to do with the ending of any of our relationships, I'm sure many of mine and their insecurities led to that.

But sometimes, just sometimes, I have to wonder if to a certain extent I'm not comfortable about the core of who I am and where I come from at times, how can anybody else be.

So to all the bi-racial kids, who can pass and never thought about what they are, or how to identify themselves, consider yourselves lucky. Genetics where kind to you.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Pessimistic, I'm aware. But it seems looking forward and looking back (I know I promised myself no more looking back, but what we can learn about ours and other peoples past decisions are invaluable in determining where we go "from here.")

Anyways.

What it seems there is however, is good timing and bad timing.

Bad timing for some people is like bad luck. (They are mutually exclusive. And besides, I don't even believe in luck anyways.)

You can take a personally inventory every few months, and while feeling like you've moved ahead in your goals for what you want, there's just a little feeling of despair that your not quite as far as you want to be.

Like that white picket fence is just oput of reach. (This concept being purely metaphorically, of course. The white picket fence in my mind is where I'm happy and comfortable, surrounded by people and friends I care about, and happy about where I've taken my life.)

It seems any goal you look to, even after past accomplishments that at some point may have seemed unachievable, is still always and eternally somewhat unattainable until its completed.

Maybe part of the problem is recently I look and wonder if what I thought I wanted to do is in fact what I really want to do. )And I'm not getting any younger. No one is ever getting any younger.)

Maybe the key is to settle and be comfortable. (But I'll never settle. Maybe it's the spark of defiance in me, the rebel part of me that just feels at my core that it's wrong at any level to submit.)

I feel like sometimes I destroy things because I feel like comfort is settling. I never want to settle. (I never want anyone else to settle either.)

But i'm not even sure what settling means.

Back to fairy tales. Originally, the Grimm Fairy Tales where these gory, horror stories that acted as sort of morality tales to keep children in check. They were the first Stephen King short stories, really.

Somewhere along the way Hollywood, Disney, the Media, has transformed and re-crafted these tales into the perfect ideal of the human dream. We end up doing the perfect job, with the person erson as our mate, with the perfect home and family and we never need to take chances because our lives are perfect the way they are.

It's kind creepy, the lull, the Matrix-like world we are supposed to have for ourselves.

What if this perfect world is just being in flux.

Crisis of future?

I feel like we never know what we want to do until we've done what we don't want to do.

Sometimes, I look at life, at relationships and situations and circumstances and wonder why everything seems to have to be so complicated. Why we have to dance around these notions of things that may or may not be bad ideas. (So simply stated, because people even unto themselves are constantly changing and evolving...well we hope...the fact is some people don't...but pretending that most people do this in any case..) not two situations that we are presented in in life can possibly turn out the same because people are different. People live their lives based on past expereinces and as thse experiences are always different, there can be no two identical situations.

Even in the disaster minefield of relationships in my life, no two relationships are the same, have ended the same, or are surrounded by the exact same circumstances. Sure the build up and destruction may have felt the same or similar, but these have always been uniquely different and taught me something a little different about myself.

There are no fairy tales. There's only what we experiences and do for our selves.

There are no picket fences. Only what we use to figure out what we are going to do next.

There are no happy endings. No one ends until they die. There is just life that you live.

If your timing is right, the timing of events in life means your a little happier then the next person.

Friday, January 08, 2010

It's not because I don't think you're interesting. Or because you haven't got anything to say. Because when I imagine our conversations, they go on until the end of time. I almost can't keep up with what you want to talk about it.

At least how I imagine it.

Really, you're kind of intimidating. Not you specifically actually but the aura of you. (Whatever that means. I think I half made it up) I don't know how to approach it. So I try to play it cool (almost standoffish it seems of recollection) and pretend like I'm just like any one else and could handle it if we got in a situation where words would actually have to come out of my mind.

You see...you're pretty. In that natural way. In the way you don't have to work for. It's a natural beauty that I respect on so many levels. It's something I noticed when I first saw you. Maybe you've heard it before, but it's not a line. I don't do "lines". And if you haven't heard it, you certainly should have.

Sometimes I like think you were a secret agent and all the rest of this is just cover. I can't imagine information you wouldn't be able to get with just a glimpse of that smile. That Mona Lisa smile. Maybe a little fantastic...maybe a little silly..but you know..it is what it is...

I believe you can believe that comfort can be found in a instant...in the fact that people can be comfortable. I could see myself being comfortable with you. Isn't that important?

And it's difficult to get past this whole awkward beginning stages mostly because I'm scared my imagination has run too wild.

I mean, what would you say, if some stranger just walked up to you and tried to start talking to you?

Exactly.

I could have all the confidence in the world, but one false move and...well...first impressions are everything.

Better to not have any impression at all.

Become a wallflower. Blend into the back as just another of the tons of people you walk by every day.

Just know this...I haven't said hello, not because I'm rude, or because I don't want to, but I feel like I'll say it the wrong way.

How the hell do you say"hello" the wrong way, anyways?

I don't know...but in my mind I've done it.

First impressions being what they are.

Yeah, I think too much. I know.

Some people know me...I'm an introverted extrovert. Around people I know...people I'm comfortable with...life of the party.

Other than that, turtle...head...shell.

Hopefully, the other day, you didn't take that whole thing as an affront. Because I was just scared and couldn't imagine placing myself in a situation that fell in my lap.

Nope. Maybe if it fell in my lap, things would have been different. But to place myself there...nope. Not yet.

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

One of the chief (conceits? ironies? fears?) within the concept of true love soul mates and anything else you want to define people who are fated to be together forever blah blah blah is a notion that the person your with isn't necessarily the "one". This concept of the "one" is romanticized on film and in the page, in song and verse, in every type of media.

Why then do we feel more about in the dramatic re-interpretations of our feelings that exposuuse loss and what almost was than in those stories about serendipity?

Don't get me wrong. I do believe some people are lucky enough, even if it takes them three or four tries to find that perfect person for them.

However.

This is not always reciprocated.

Meaning one persons perfect person is not always the others.

Or something.

Anyways.

I think the notion of being romantic sometimes get us caught up in the other characteristics of what we want. Like to notion of being the great romantic person starts to overshadow the realistic and earthbound realities of what a relationship between two people actually is or at least how it should be.

Sometimes its a simple as saying hello. But what if you want to know more? HOw do you show interest in getting to know someone who potentially could be the "one" without it getting all messy and...whatever.

There is no "one" really. IT just people at stages in similar mindsets.

Maybe that's what being the "one" is though.

It's hard to balance the romantic "nice guy" with what the perception of what a girl wants is. "The Bad boy" the "guy who need to be fixed" the "intense and brooding guy".

What if you just want to be yourself?

It's not a race, it's not a competition. You can get there.

There's lust, there's infatuation.

But what is "love"? (it almost sounds as if a robot asking his creator how to quantify human emotion...)

Sunday, January 03, 2010

When I was in the 4th grade, I started a dalliance with being a thespian first sparked by my role of Bob Crachit in our holiday performance of A Christmas Carol. Productions put on by 4th grade auteur and English teacher, Mr. Cassidy. (Actually, this isn't entirely accurate. My first introduction to acting actually came in the form of playing a one Mr. Jack Rabbit in the second grade, a role and name that would be unearthed once I got to college and would stick with me through my entire college radio career...but I digress...that is a story for antoher day...)To contrast my role as one of the touchstones of Victorian literature symbols of fatherhood, in the annual sprig production at AES (which up until that year has always been The Wizard Of Oz), I was cast as one of the Lost Boys a role with lines that were specially created for me. Was it some kind of conscious effort to expand my range as an actor by the venerable Mr. Cassidy? Probably not. But the irony of playing a father providing what little he can for his family into a boy who is quite literally "lost" and will never grow up is not lost to me today.

Sure, I'm probably over-thinking things that happened in the 4th grade, but we look for meaning in life where we can find it, whether it was intentional or not. There's something very deliberate, for instance, that in the role of Peter Pan, Mr. Cassidy cast in much the Broadway-Mary martin- wheelhouse, a girl in the role of Peter Pan. Despite what you think, there's something blissfully anarchic to me in casting a girl in the role of a boy who will never grow up, especially in 1986.

Anyways, I digress. Again.

For all the Freudian nightmare analyzation you can do with Peter Pan, maybe the most important part of the play, or at least the part that has stuck with me all these years later, has nothing to do with the concept of the man-child, but in the concept of believing. You see , the death and resurrection of Tinkerbell exists as an almost pre-modern, "The Secret. It's the PMA HR always talked about with Bad Brains. Sure it sounds like New Age bullshit on some level, but it's not. Maybe it's the fact that it' surrounded in the context of a children's story, a Victorian fairy tale. Maybe it's that there's something much simpler to it when we look at it in the context of the story of Peter Pan, and Peter Pan asking us to believe in faeries. Simple caveat to that though would be sometimes it's not enough to think. Sometimes actions have to follow thinking, wishing, wanting, whatever contextual action word you want to put on that whole thing.

Sometimes wishers, dreamers, thinkers...sometimes they are left behind.

Anybody whose accomplished anything in life has enacted on their thoughts and dreams and wishes. No one can sit in their living room and simply will things to happen. Even Peter seemed to give some kinetic energy, some of his "magic" so that Tinkerbell could live.

Anythiong can change for you at any time. I followed up my thespian aspirations a few years later, acting in a one MR. Gorey's adapatation/musical (I don't remember if there wa smusic in this one although I think there was) of The Gift Of the Magi, the old O'Henry story about two people who meet the ultimate irony at Christmas when trying to think about each other. Then I got cast as King Arthur in the school production of Camelot, a grueling 4 months where the whole play was put on the shoulders of a 7th grader who was after school every day and in almost every scene. I retired after that mostly because I felt like I was terrible, no matter what everyone said to me. (Of particular interest was Opening night where I completely froze up and lost entire parts of dialogue on stage. After lambasting me and yelling at me to get it together, I lost it and Mr. Gorey related a story about how Richard Burton has once pissed his pants on stage so anything I did couldn't be that bad. That story always stuck with me...kind of like when your told to imagine people in their underwear if your nervous. Through all the bands I've been in and performances I've done since, I've never had stage fright, despite my need to retire from acting when I found it really interesting at the time.)

Point being. Do. You need to do. It's all you have.

I think one of the things I want to do this year is fail. Because failing is not the negative I've put on it my whole life. The negative is never to try. Trying,is the same as wishing is the same as hoping, is the same as what Peter Pan asked us all to do way back in the 4th grade. I've always had this implicit fear of failure that I've incorrectly always just made synonymous with rejection. Failure and rejection are mutually exclusive.

When Peter Pan asks us to believe in faeries, he's asking us to believe in ourselves. He's asking us to chance failure, for the chance of something better.